Diamond Dogs (1974)
Ah, finally! An album I know well. This was the last real glam rock album from Bowie, just before he launched into his “new soul” era, ditching the world of makeup and high heels just as it was beginning to become derivative, and once again reinventing himself as the rock and roll chameleon. Having parted company with Mick Ronson and longtime bassist Trevor Bolder, Bowie undertook all the guitar parts himself (bar “Rock'n'Roll with Me”, on which the guitar was played by Earl Slick) and this tends to make the album sound rawer, almost amateurish in parts, but also imparts a freshness to it, and betrays a nod towards the looming storm of punk, waiting on the horizon.
Based loosely around George Orwell's dystopian masterpiece, it references much of
Nineteen Eighty-Four in some of the song titles, and though he had been refused permission by Orwell's estate to create a rock musical based on the book, he used much of the music he had created for that project in anticipation of being given the go-ahead. Of course, Bowie had been looking into dark futures since the days of
Hunky Dory, and it was probably no stretch for him to fill in the gaps and write his own story of a bleak future where kids ride around on roller-skates and have their own
Mad Max style of tribal gang warfare. Again, in this vision of the future he was almost prophesying the rise of punk, which is pretty incredible given that this was 1974, with at least three to four more years before that particular phenomenon descended upon us.
With what sounds like a blood-curdling cry, the howl of a wolf or some semi-human being, which I think is made on the guitar, Bowie narrates the dark post-apocalyptic intro to the album, setting the scene as the strong prey on the weak and only the fittest survive, while discordant sax plays in the background and guitar feedback lays down an uncertain and somewhat disturbing soundtrack to this tale of final days, which Bowie declares “The year of the Diamond Dog” adding with feeling as we pile into the first proper track, the title one in fact, “This ain't rock'n'roll! This is
genocide!”
Driven then on a very Stonesish chugging guitar, with sprightly piano almost out of place in this recounting of the crumbling of civilisation and the rise of the freaks who patrol the wasteland and spare no-one, “Diamond Dogs” rocks along at a great pace, and I have to say I really don't hear the absence of Ronson here. The guitar is simpler, yes, but when I heard this album originally back in the early eighties I had no idea he was not present. The chorus is instantly catchy as Bowie warns “Young girl, they call them the diamond dogs!” The song introduces Halloween Jack, Bowie's latest creation, again a version of Ziggy, who just refused to die, and the master of this bleak landscape, the survivor of survivors, king of the asphalt jungle, toughest of the tough, lord of all he surveys. The sax breaks coming in give the song a somewhat jazzy, soul aspect, and the almost-stop in the middle adds a lot to it.
Even without his longtime bandmates, it seems Bowie could do no wrong at this point. He had already taken an album of cover songs to the top, and now his adoring fans gleefully elevated him back to that position, and even across in the States he achieved his highest chart placing, getting for the first time to number five. Bowie's star was certainly on the rise now: the starman was no longer waiting in the sky; the man had fallen to Earth and found himself worshipped and adored. All hail the new king, the thin white duke, the diamond alpha dog! “Sweet Thing” opens very sort of psychedelicish, then advances on a slow piano and sax line, Bowie's voice dropping in register before coming back up for the chorus, running the whole gamut of his range. This song also, it must be said, presages his next move into the territory occupied mostly by persons not of his colour, as we will see soon when his soul period began.
Lovely piano work from Mike Garson again, and it's the album's first ballad, a three-part suite (the first, I think, he had attempted) which runs into “Candidate” on a sweet (sorry) guitar solo and pounding, almost classical piano, slow, military drumming now accompanying Bowie's sax breaks and guitar. The main melody remains but things begin to pick up in tempo as the passion increases with kind of a nod towards new wave, which had not yet even become a thing yet. Such an innovator. It builds to a fine crescendo and then descends into “Sweet Thing (reprise)” as the suite comes to its end on a twittering sax solo, everything slowing down again, the piece this time taking on gospel overtones and seeming to build to something. Which it sure as hell does.
Another of Bowie's bigger singles and one he's well known for, “Rebel Rebel” takes the album by the scruff and just fires it into an alley, laughing and diving on top of it with wild abandon. The grinding guitar riff that runs all through it is its signature, and worthy of Ronson at his best. The somewhat androgynous lines “Got your momma in a whirl/ She's not sure if you're a boy or a girl” definitely point towards his own feelings of sexuality at the time, well documented at that period. “Rebel Rebel” is a simple song, but so much the better for it, and I defy anyone not to tap their foot or even shake their head to its infectious rhythm. It does owe quite a lot of its iconic riff to “Satisfaction”, yes, but I love it and I especially love the way the chorus is almost the same as the verse. A precursor to punk? You 'd have to ask those better acquainted with that musical style, but I'd be inclined to think that a lot of young snotnoses coming up would have listened to this and thought “F
uck yeah! Let's do
that!”
Garson's again almost gospel piano takes in “Rock'n'Roll with Me” as Bowie takes it down a notch, slowing everything down with sleazy sax and we have the second ballad, with incredible power and passion driven into the vocal, and a wonderful display on the guitar from Earl Slick in his guest role, almost sounds Claptonesque to me. One of my favourite tracks then is “We Are the Dead”, with a sort of dark carnival piano and organ driving the unsettling melody, a soft vocal from Bowie that builds and builds to a powerful climax, while “1984” floats in on sprinkly piano and almost disco rhythms, Visconti's strings playing a star turn here, really upping the tension and passion. Bowie's guitar is funky as all hell, and there's a lamenting moaned vocal that attends the chorus. It's possible that Bowie is cocking a satirical eyebrow at Orwell's estate's refusal to grant him permission for his musical when he warns “Beware the savage roar of 1984!”
“Big Brother” then comes in on trumpeting keyboards and brass with a dark choral vocal, a thick bass which sounds like it came from discarded edits for “Starman” and there's more soul allied to even Mariachi trumpets here. Great chorus with a fantastic hook, wonderful sax work and a real sense of desperate yearning takes us into the closer, the oddly titled “Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family”, a kind of a mix of a tribal ritual and
danse macabre, with odd
vocalise within which the word “brother” can be discerned. Driven on a powerful, insistent guitar and sort of calypso style percussion it goes, basically around in a circle, until the last minute or so is just one half-word (I've seen it said that it sounds like “riot” but I think it's “brother”, or more correctly, “broth-”) which repeats sharply until it fades out.
TRACK LISTING
Future Legend
Diamond Dogs
Sweet Thing
Candidate
Sweet Thing (reprise)
Rebel Rebel
Rock'n'Roll with Me
We are the Dead
1984
Big Brother
Chant of the Ever Circling Skeletal Family
I remember how impressed I was the first time I heard this album. I remember now, because up to now I haven't really listened to it since, and now I regret that. As a swansong to his Ziggy personality in total, the end of his glam rock phase, and a thank you to his fans for sticking with him, you couldn't get better. Having attained all his goals, broken the UK and the USA, with his name now a household one and his meteoric rise to fame almost overnight (from unknown to star in what, two years?) most artistes would have been happy to have sat back and let the money roll in.
But as we know, Bowie never was most people. And having seen the heights he had scaled, it was like he looked across to a bigger, harder mountain, clapped his hands together and said “Right, that's that done. What's next?”
What was next was a complete change of direction, and a move that could have spelled doom for a lesser artist. But Bowie was never ... you get the idea.
Rating: 9.5/10